


L'après-midi de Chapman

by houndsoflove



Category: Monty Python RPF
Genre: Infidelity, M/M, Sexual Fantasy, Surreal, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 13:48:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2853020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houndsoflove/pseuds/houndsoflove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Graham daydreams on a summer's afternoon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	L'après-midi de Chapman

‘I’ll sleep with you, if you want.’

Graham opened his eyes. A figure loomed over him, silhouetted against a vast slab of deep blue sky. It was Terry. He was shirtless. Perspiration gleamed on his sunburned shoulders, and his hair hung in damp black ringlets about his face. He stood astride Graham, looking down at him.

‘I’ll do it if it’ll make you feel better,’ he was saying, running a hand through his hair. There was something very un-Terry about this Terry.

Graham shut him out by closing his eyes, head thudding back into the grass. ‘Not that again.’

‘I mean it.’

‘Of course you do,’ replied Graham lazily. ‘You’re the curious sort, aren’t you?’

Un-Terry said nothing.

‘Look: you’re not my type, and that’s all there is to it. Too rough-hewn. Too loud. Too… _you_. Now, please go away. Let me bask in peace.’

He anticipated the thud of knees either side of his head, and the implacable weight that settled on his chest. He opened his eyes again.

Terry’s skin radiated a musk of sweat and baked earth. His legs were smeared with dirt and blood; he must’ve been playing football with the others. Graham extracted his arms and let them ascend the plane of Terry’s thighs, coarse hair prickling his palms. The tip of Terry’s tongue slid along the tight line of his lips. His eyes were very dark.

‘But you’re willing,’ conceded Graham, breaching the waistline of his torn and muddied shorts, ‘and that always counts for something.’

 

‘What do you think, Gray?’

‘Hmm?’

The sun burned orange through his eyelids. He had flecks of grass stuck to one cheek.

‘Were you asleep?’

It was John’s voice.

Ah, yes. A meeting, in the garden. Writing. Work. Dreadfully dull.

‘I was dreaming,’ said Graham. The words unspooled slowly from his overheated brain. Images slithered through his mind like sand through careless fingers, evading his frustrated grasp. _Terry was here, only moments ago, and now he’s gone, along with the rough pads of his fingers and the taut line of his throat and his hard, hot kisses._ Graham sat up. John was looking at him strangely. They were the only two in the garden.

‘Where’s Terry?’

‘He’s not here,’ said John. His tone was tight and clipped. ‘Pay attention, will you?’

 

_Pay attention, he says._

 

Graham laid back down.

 

_...then I’ll wake to the primal fever_

_Erect, alone, beneath the ancient flood…_

Michael had daisies in his hair. John had put them there, with soft eyes and gentle hands. Now Michael was laughing, shoving him away. They chased each other round and round the lawn like little boys. Graham was content to lay back and watch them, because it was far too hot to do anything else.

‘John, John - ow!’

Michael had been tackled to the ground and John was wrestling with him, showering him with handfuls of decapitated flowers and torn up grass. Michael was laughing uncontrollably; high, snorting, hiccoughing laughter. John crouched over him, holding him down by his wrists. The laughter subsided. Their mingled breathing filled Graham’s head as he watched. Michael had stopped struggling, his chest rising and falling rapidly. John’s tousled hair hung limply away from his forehead. Dampness spread along his collar and beneath his underarms. His expression was one of resolve. He leaned down.

The garden swam like a mirage.

A kiss.

_Oh, how nice._

 

‘Grah- _am_.’

‘Hmm? What?’

 

Michael was getting up, brushing the flowers from his hair with quick, savage movements. John was saying something, eyes wide and panicked.

 

_Wait, don’t go-_

 

‘I was enjoying that.’

‘Oh, so you _were_ listening,’ said John, grimly.

‘Of course I was. Carry on.’

‘Are you sure? Not too taxing for you?’

Graham licked the tar from his sticky lips. His mouth was dry. ‘Absolutely not. Away you go.’

John was in an appalling mood today. One could almost be fooled into thinking he didn’t have a sense of humour. Or a heart. He definitely needed to get shagged.

‘So, anyway. The policeman steps in, and he says-’

 

_...my passion, how ripe and purple already…_

 

‘-the Women’s Institute-’

 

_...every pomegranate bursts, murmuring with the bees..._

 

‘-giant seagulls-’

 

_...and our blood, enamoured of what will seize it,_

_Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire yet..._

Ah, Eric was sunbathing too. At last, someone else who couldn’t be bothered with this sleep-making drivel. He was wearing a pair of (what Graham supposed were) fashionable sunglasses, and a gauzy shirt that looked like it was made for a woman. He was flipping idly through a magazine, pausing to flick his hair away from his face every once in a while.

Graham regarded him hungrily. These imaginings had a tangible edge - moisture beaded and shivered down Eric’s temple with startling clarity, and Graham knew that if he struck out his tongue he could catch it. The colours of the garden glared brighter than ever and the hot air stifled him like a damp rag. How could he still be dreaming?

‘Eric, come here.’

Eric pulled off his sunglasses, rolled away from his magazine and stood without a word. Graham smiled up at him.

‘Take your clothes off,’ he said.

Eric’s eyes reflected the sky quite poetically. His trousers dropped to the ground.

Graham propped himself up on one elbow. ‘Now the shirt.’

Eric crossed his arms and pulled it over his head. But it wasn’t Eric that emerged the other side- it was Terry. Graham blinked up at him in surprise.

Terry sank to his knees. His hands trembled over Graham’s belt. They were no longer in a sun drenched garden, but in a cold hotel room that reeked of damp. Terry’s face was pinched with apprehension.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing,’ he was saying, over and over.

‘Shh. It’s all right,’ said Graham, and reached out to touch his arm.

Michael looked up at him fearfully. ‘Please. I can’t.’

Graham shook his head violently. His brain sloshed around like a liferaft on a churning sea. He was no longer Graham; he was John.

The hotel room dissolved into some kind of corridor, starkly lit and blank as a sheet of unmarked paper. They were alone. His hand was on Michael’s cheek, which burned beneath his fingertips. ‘I can’t,’ he repeated, pleadingly. 'I can't, I’m married-'

Graham’s thumb - no, John’s - crept between his lips. Michael's eyes slid blissfully shut.

_Let me touch you. Just once._

But Graham was suddenly Graham again, with his hand still outstretched.

‘Leave off,’ said Eric curtly, eyes flashing, flinching away from him. ‘I’m not like you!’

Something heavy landed on his head, and for a moment he thought that Eric had struck him. He reeled upright with a yelp.

 

A notebook tumbled into his lap. His fingers curled around cool blades of grass. Birdsong.

‘You were snoring,’ said John beside him. ‘I give up.’

‘Sorry,’ muttered Graham, glancing around the garden. The sunlight had mellowed and no longer dazzled him. ‘ _This prey, forever ungrateful, frees itself and is gone; Not pitying the sob with which I was still drunk_.’

John’s brow flatlined. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ said Graham, patting around for his pipe. ‘Let’s go indoors. I’m fed up with this heat.’

John got to his feet. Yellow daisy-heads tumbled from his lap, denuded of their petals.

Graham ambled behind him. What a strange, strange afternoon. He kicked something in the grass and it bounced away from him - a golden wedding band. Lost. Discarded? He leaned down. On closer inspection, it was just a grubby old coin.

‘Tea?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

He looked over his shoulder across the lawn one last time, before the leaning shadows swallowed up his dreams and the naked nubile nymphae that fled, bare-bottomed and giggling, into the tall grass.

‘Coming, Gray?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m coming.’

He went into the house.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this story is weird.
> 
> That aside, I had a lot of fun writing it. I wasn't sure if I could write decent RPF, so I hope it turned out all right! 
> 
> Graham is the member of Python that I find the most fascinating. A true eccentric, forever off in his own universe. Without waffling on too much about it, this fic draws on these elements of his personality and on various anecdotes (which, knowing Graham, are probably greatly exaggerated or just not true at all): his alleged belief that everyone on the planet is at the very least bisexual, his story about Terry J propositioning him, and his ideas about the true nature of John Cleese's interest in Michael Palin. 
> 
> The poem referenced throughout is 'l'après-midi d'un faune' by Stéphane Mallarmé (the extracts I've used are from an English translation). A faun is a pretty fitting character for Chapman, so in my crazy mind it works. Trust me.
> 
> Final disclaimer: This work and the events depicted within are entirely fictional.


End file.
